SBIR Phase I: A Dual Wrist Patch Based System for Continuous Blood Pressure Monitoring.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is the ability to redefine how blood pressure is monitored and managed. The current standard of care for blood pressure measurement is to utilize discrete snapshots taken by cuff-based systems to manage a constantly changing pressure. These snapshots are often inaccurate and lead to uncontrolled blood pressure, a 45 billion dollar problem for our healthcare system. The proposed project will develop a non-invasive approach to continuously measure blood pressure. Accurate granular blood pressure trends would allow physicians to better manage high blood pressure, a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, which affects over 100 million Americans today. Real-time blood pressure monitoring would also help patients understand the impact of their daily behaviors on blood pressure and promote healthy lifestyle choices. A continuous non-invasive blood pressure monitor has multiple market applications and would pioneer the field of continuous blood pressure analytics. The proposed project aims to develop a wrist based patch system that utilizes optical sensors to obtain pulse waveform data and a novel approach to convert it to blood pressure. The team will be developing a working prototype that acquires the raw data and converts it to absolute blood pressure. The prototype will also have the ability to transmit these blood pressures to a smart device for review. With successful development of the working prototype the team will then generate a databank to refine the algorithm used to convert differential pulse arrival time to blood pressure. Accurate outpatient blood pressure trends would take the guesswork out of blood pressure management and has the potential of identifying new prognostic markers for cardiovascular disease.